


Black's Anatomy

by WhyTFNot



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Muggle, F/F, F/M, M/M, Medical
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-04-27 13:34:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14426499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhyTFNot/pseuds/WhyTFNot
Summary: Sirius is working as an intern at St. Mungo's. One of his first ever cases, a very snarky, very sick, and very attractive patient, tests everything he thought he learned in med school.The title is a play on Grey's Anatomy, since it's a hospital AU, but the plot's not anything like it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I should be studying for finals but I had an idea and well... it's become a Thing. This will probably be way more chapters than it needs to be. Hope you like it.

Some mornings start with sun shining on your face, and leisurely getting ready for work while you sip the cappuccino you actually had time to make. Other mornings start by realizing you’re going to be late to the first day of your new job. Sirius Black, who was running out of his apartment not even bothering to make sure he was wearing matching shoes, was experiencing the latter.

 

He downed his iced coffee in two gulps and threw the empty cup onto the floor of his car as the wheels screamed on the parking lot asphalt. Jumping out of the driver’s seat he ran half way across the parking lot.

 

“SHIT!” He had forgotten his lab coat. Running all the way back to his car, which he had also forgotten to lock, he grabbed the coat and sprinted back the way he had come.

 

His hands frantically trying to pull his hair back into a bun- did he remember a hair tie? Oh thank god- he used his elbows to push through the front doors of St. Mungo’s hospital, crashing into the nearly silent lobby.

 

Heads turned.

 

He straightened up, adjusted his lab coat over his scrubs, and walked over to the group of people staring at him that he assumed were his new co workers.

 

“Hey, uh, I’m guessing we’re all the new interns?” He tried not to sound out of breath.

 

“You have coffee on your coat.” The girl who spoke was tall, with red hair that she had neatly tied in a knot at the base of her neck. Her lab coat read ‘Evans’.

 

“Uh, no.” Sirius licked his thumb and rubbed at the brown spot on his left pocket. The cup must not have been empty when he threw it on the floor. “It’s blood,” He lied. “We’re _doctors._ ”

 

“Actually,” A tall, stern looking woman in her early thirties was fast approaching them. She towered over the lot as she got closer, the frown she wore not quite masking her rather pretty features. “You’re interns.”

 

The General.

 

The legend preceded the woman, all of the interns standing before her knowledgeable in the horror stories that followed the General around. Get on her good side, and you’d have your pick of surgeries. Get on her bad side and your life would be hell. Either way, for the next year, she owned each and every one of them.

 

“My name is Dr. Mcgonagall and I am your Resident in charge. You can call me the General, you can call me Mcgonagall, you can call me whatever, but when _I_ call _you_ , you come running. Understand?”   She smiled, as if her mere presence didn’t send chills down each of their spines.

 

They nodded.

 

“Evans, Pettigrew, Black, Mckinnon, Macdonald.” She read the names off their coats, checking that everyone was in attendance. “Let’s move.” She strode off quickly.

 

“There goes the general...” Evans whispered.

 

“Rise up.” Sirius whispered back, earning himself a grin and a nod.

 

Mcgonagall’s height gave her a stride so impressive that each of them struggled to keep up as she wound through the hospital.

 

“Forty-eight hour shifts, huh?” The small, clumsy looking boy next to Sirius piped up. His coat read Pettigrew. “I’m gonna die.”

 

“We knew what we signed up for.” ‘Macdonald’ chastised, her long dark ponytail swishing behind her. She didn’t seem to be one for chit chat.

 

Sirius could already see the intern hierarchy forming. It looked like Evans and Macdonald were going to be the ones to look out for. He could probably outperform Pettigrew in his sleep. Mckinnon he still wasn’t sure about.

 

The group stopped at a nurses station on the second floor, facing a whiteboard on the wall, full of names, times, and medical jargon.

 

“This is the schedule board.” Mcgonagall explained, gesturing to the surgery schedule on the wall. “Impress me this week and you may find your own name up here by Friday.”

 

Everyone’s eyes went wide, as glances were thrown around the group. It was kill or be killed now.

 

“Here’s how your day will go. I have a surgery in ten minutes so I’m sending you down to the pit. Any misbehavior, any mistake and I’ll hear about it. Just because I’m not there doesn’t mean you aren’t trying to impress me. I’ve told the other residents they are free to grab you for their services today. Each of these people are exponentially more important than you are, do you understand? If someone asks for you, you drop what you’re doing and go.” Mcgonagall briefed them as she tied a scrub cap over her hair.

 

They stared at her in obedient silence. Her brow furrowed. “Don’t just stand there, get moving!”

 

Feet hit the ground running...and kept running, down several hallways that all looked exactly the same.

 

“We’re fucking lost.” Macdonald spoke, as they passed the same nurses station for the third time, the nurses chuckling softly as they watched them pass.

 

“We’re fucking what?” Sirius said. “The hell are we following you for, then?”

 

“Well, if you don’t want to be lost anymore, by all means lead the way.”

 

“Guys, what’s the pit?” Pettigrew asked awkwardly, scratching the back of his head. He didn’t even know where they were trying to go.

 

“For fuck’s sake, It’s the emergency room. Is this your first time in a hospital?” Evans was just as frustrated as the rest of them. “Let’s just ask a nurse…”

 

“If you want to look incompetent on your first day, by all means…” Macdonald rolled her eyes.

 

“Oh my god.” Mckinnon, who had been quiet so far, marched herself right over to the nurses station, and casually leaned herself up against the counter. “Ladies, I so hate to interrupt the show we’ve been putting on for you, but could possibly point us in the direction of the pit…”

 

One of the nurses listed off some directions, pointing down various hallways, all the while trying to keep her laughter at a minimum.

 

“Thank you,” Mckinnon blew her a kiss, and then looked back at her coworkers, making a circling motion in the air with her finger. “Let’s go dumbasses.”

 

5 minutes later they arrived at the destination they should have found half an hour ago.

 

“What’s the trauma resident’s name again? Fletcher?”

 

“I think it was Floyd…”

 

“Frazier?”

 

“Flitwick.” Everyone’s heads turned, looking for the source of the voice. “No, no. Down here.”

 

The man was...three feet tall. Sirius, and the rest of his new found frenemies, stared in shock at the man that looked like he had to buy his scrubs at a costume store. The shock must have been apparent on their faces.

 

“Never what anyone is expecting, I know. Mckinnon, there’s a lady in bed 3 who could use sutures. Black, I need vomit bags for bed five…” Flitwick rattled off orders to each of them and they scurried off to do their various tasks, still trying to figure out if the tiny but intimidating man was real.

 

The next hour or so became a full fledged competition of who could smile the hardest, suture the fastest, and avoid vomiting patients the most diligently.

 

Sirius took immense pride in the compliment he received from Flitwick on his bedside manner, and the pout from Macdonald that came with it.

 

Evan’s was handling the stress of the bustling emergency room spectacularly, earning jealous glances from both Sirius and Mckinnon as they waited in the bay for an ambulance a few minutes out.

 

“I don’t know if I want to be her or fuck her.” Mckinnon said as she watched Evans tell a little kid jokes to distract him from the gash in his mom’s leg she was sewing up. Sirius’s head cocked in surprise.

 

“Homo?” He asked, the tone of his voice implying that he answered to the same term.

 

“Homo.” She confirmed, and they nodded. The ambulance arrived and, their conversation forgotten, Sirius and Mckinnon got to work on the most recent tragedy to pass through St. Mungos.

 

Not everyone was blending in so seamlessly, however.

 

“Pettigrew, if I have to tell you one more time that we don’t use kidney dishes as vomit trays I’ll be giving the janitorial staff your address so they can deal with you themselves.” Flitwick shouted across the emergency room, where an unfortunate patient had just vomited into one of the aforementioned dishes, the vile liquid shooting up the sloped walls of the tray and splashing on the floor. “We use bags, god damn it. BAGS!”

 

“Sorry sir.” Peter profusely apologized both to Flitwick and the patient for the next ten minutes. But he was getting the hang of things. Just slowly.

 

As promised by Mcgonagall, various residents began to stop by looking for help for their services. Lily, to no one’s surprise but everyone’s envy, was chosen first, by the resident neurosurgeon, Dr. Slughorn.

 

“Of course she gets chosen for the coolest specialty on her first day.” Marlene said, taking a break at the nurses station with Sirius. As the day wore on, they were starting to learn each other’s first names.

 

“First three hours, no less.” Sirius shot back, sipping water out of a paper cup and trying not to be bitter.

 

“Black!” Flitwick piped up from behind them...well, below them. “There’s a woman choking in bed four. See if you can do something about it.”

 

Dr. Binns, the general surgery resident, only had a chance to step one foot in the emergency room before Mary Macdonald was off her ass up trying to get on his service. He was glad to take someone so eager, and as Mary learned later, if she had waited to hear his specialty she might not have wanted the case.

 

“Have fun observing your bowel resection, Mac!” Marlene called after her, earning herself a dirty look.

 

“If you weren’t so busy making fun of her you might land a surgery for yourself Mckinnon.” Flitwick, who had seen her perform flawless sutures throughout the past hours, but had also seen her take about a hundred breaks, scolded her from the nurses station.

 

“Astute observation, ‘Wick my man. Have you ever thought yours is the service I want to be on?” She winked at him as she grabbed a chart and called her next patient back.

 

Eventually Marlene got picked by a Dr. Sprout, a plastics resident who was looking for help with an ear reconstruction. That left only Sirius and Pettigrew, who’s first name turned out to be Peter, left in the emergency room.

 

While Peter had turned out to be good conversation, Sirius couldn’t help but feel a little defeated that he was the last one left in the emergency room with the guy who hadn’t even known what the pit was.

 

Not to be gay, but he felt like he was on the bottom two of America’s Next Top Model, anxiously waiting for Tyra to call his name.

 

“Flitwick?” A booming voice echoed throughout the emergency room, the man that came with it just as large and imposing. “Got any residents left?” Sirius’s ears perked up from where he was attending to a patient.

 

Watching the man talk to Flitwick was like watching an elephant and a mouse have a conversation. “Just two. Take Pettigrew, he’s not busy.” Flitwick bit his tongue so the words ‘and a liability’ didn’t also escape.

 

“Reporting for duty sir,” Peter mumbled as he scampered across the floor to his new assignment.

 

“This ain’t war kid,” The giant, who’s white coat read ‘Hagrid’, chuckled as he lead Peter out of the pit.

 

“Where are we going? Ortho? Cardiothoracic?”

 

“Peds.”

 

Sirius deflated, feeling like he just lost a race he was so sure he was going to win. Tyra’s voice echoed in his head. “We were rooting for you. We were all rooting for you.” But he had to ignore that voice and listen to the one telling him “I need you to run an EKG in bed six.”

 

“Yes sir.”

 

It turned out that Sirius didn’t have to waste any time imagining the fun cases his coworkers were getting to work on because they were all too eager to share during their lunch break.

 

“Black!” Marlene called from where the rest of them were sitting around a table, enjoying their lunch. He sat down, gratefully taking the banana she offered him as he realized his lunch was on his kitchen counter at home.

 

“So, let’s hear it.” He said as he ate his banana. At least he got to hear the cool stories, if he didn’t get to be in them. “How amazing was everyone’s day?”

 

“You guys, I saw an actual fucking _brain.”_ Lily, which had turned out to be Evans’s first name, was the most eager to recount her very first surgery observation in the prestigious operating room of _the_ Dr. Horace Slughorn. “Slughorn is a genius. Did you know six of his students have gone on to win nobel prizes? Six!”

 

But Marlene wasn’t going to let some stuffy brain surgery upstage her ear reconstruction. “Who cares about brains, I helped build an ear today. I built an ear and I put it on somebody’s face. “

 

“Poor bastard. That’s not where ears go, Marlene.” Peter said, muffled through a bite of chicken salad. “Besides, ears are pretty standard stuff, you should check out peds.”

 

“What, sick little kids?”

 

“Honestly, this is going to sound bad, but I don’t remember a single patient I saw today. I couldn’t stop watching _that guy_.” Peter motioned to Hagrid, who was sitting on two cafeteria chairs and chatting loudly with Dr. Sprout.

 

“ _That_ is the peds resident? He’s huge.”

 

“I know it was incredible. Like watching a giant care for smurfs. They love him.” While they chatted about the size disparities of some of the residents, Sirius looked over at Mary who had been uncharacteristically quiet and, for some reason, was wearing a clean pair of scrubs. She noticed him looking over.

 

“What?”

 

“No stories about how much ass you kicked on Binns’s service?” Sirius asked. Marlene rolled her eyes as Marlene and Lily started to laugh.

 

“Her day has been kind of shitty.” Lily laughed, seemingly placing unnecessary emphasis on the word ‘shitty’.

 

“Yeah, her story kind of stinks.” Marlene added, still chuckling.

 

“Shut it.” Mary turned to Sirius, and sighed, obviously having already prepared her monologue in her head. “Not only is Dr. Binns THE most boring person I have ever met in my life, I just spent the last thirty minutes washing actual literal shit out of my hair.”

 

Sirius cracked a grin, “Oh damn.”

 

Mary pushed her bottom lip out, pouting at her own misfortune. “He let me carry the tray with the resected bowel in it and I dropped it.” She groaned in defeat, her face going red. “The entire janitorial staff is calling me butterfingers.” She rested her head on the cafeteria table. “It’s going to be a looooong 48 hours.”

 

“Hey,” Peter said, “We knew what we signed up for.”

 

They finished up their lunches, still casually joking around. Lily offered to throw everyone’s trash away, getting up and walking across the cafeteria to the bins. Sirius nudged Marlene.

 

“Still chasing Evans?”

 

“Oh I’m already over that. That girl is hella straight.”

 

Sirius raised an eyebrow. “You sure?”

 

“One hundred percent. She doesn’t think Katie McGrath is hot.”

 

“I’m not even going to ask how that came up in conversation naturally.”

 

The group got up, everyone straightening their white coats and starting to split off to their respective services when McGonagall approached them. In seconds, backs were straight, eyes were alert, and lips were sealed.

 

“You’re doctors, not soldiers. Breathe.” She could try and hide the smile, but McGonagall always enjoyed terrifying the new interns a little bit. “Black, Evans, you’re on my service the rest of the day. Everyone else is dismissed.” No one moved. “Go, people are waiting for you.”

 

While their friends scampered off, Sirius and Lily looked at each other questioningly.

 

“Why us?” Sirius asked.

 

“Question me, Black, and you risk me changing my mind.” She turned on her heel and started off down the hall, Sirius and Lily half jogging to keep up. “But if you must know, you’re the only two I think could handle this.”

 

That was all the answer Sirius needed. Although he was proud that Flitwick was seemingly becoming fond of him, anything had to be better than the pit. If he had to do another suture today, he’d scream.

 

As they arrived on the cardio wing, McGonagall stopped them in front of this mysterious new patient’s door. “There are some things that need to be said.” She started.

 

“I’ve been working with this patient for a year now, which is a miracle in itself because this case should have closed six months ago and not because I did my job. This patient has very _very_ severe hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Do either of you know what that is?” Both Sirius and Lily pretended to ignore the small breaks in her voice.

 

“Abnormal growth of the heart muscles. It can cause systolic dysfunction, diastolic dysfunction, and unstable arrhythmias. Leads to death by heart failure.” Evans rattled off.

 

“Good. Our patient has been experiencing chronic diastolic dysfunction, which means what, Dr. Black?”

 

Sirius startled. She had called him Dr. “It means that the thickening of his heart muscles won’t let his heart relax. It means his heart can’t fill up all the way.”

 

“Good again. The two of you will be helping me on this case intermittently until its end, which admittedly might be very soon. This case won’t take all your time, but I want you to consider it a priority. From here on out, you’ll be helping me monitor his vitals and progression while we do the hardest thing a doctor ever has to do. Wait for a donor.” She put one hand on the door handle before pausing and looking back at them.

 

“Are we ready?” Sirius and Lily nodded. She took a deep breath, smiled, and opened the door.

 

“Good evening Mr. Lupin. Mr. Potter.” McGonagall greeted the patient and the young man seated next to the bed reading a book.

 

The man reading the book, presumably Mr. Potter since the chart read ‘Remus Lupin’, looked up and smiled. “New recruits!”

 

The patient was a frail young man that was surrounded by pillows and who, Sirius thought, looked around his age. “Hey Minnie.”

 

He looked over from the TV on the wall that he was watching, but stopped when his eyes met Sirius’s. They lingered there, before moving down and taking in the whole of this new, very attractive doctor. His eyes, for some reason, stopped at Sirius’s feet.

 

“Are you aware that you’re wearing mismatching shoes?”


	2. Chapter 2

Sirius felt his cheeks flush as he looked down to see one gray sneaker poking out of his scrubs, next to one blue. So they were going to play the snark game huh? And right in front of his new boss. He looked his new patient right in the eyes, with a smile that could have been mistaken for a grimace. 

 

“Do I get points for having them on the right feet?”

 

“The jury’s still out.” Remus shot back. He hadn’t expected his snark to be so readily returned. 

 

“Ahem.” Mcgonagall cleared her throat as she grabbed the chart off the end of the hospital bed. “Why don’t you read the chart Dr. Black?” She handed him the clipboard. 

 

“Remus Lupin, 26, presenting with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Reported symptoms including dizziness, lightheadedness, shortness of breath, fluttering and abnormal heartbeat-”

 

“And that’s just because you walked in the room.” Remus winked and pointed a weak finger gun at Sirius. Lily snorted, and his friend swatted at his arm. 

 

Sirius’s breath got caught in the back of his throat. He looked wildly at Mcgonagall, trying to discern from her facial expression how he should proceed. She was trying to hide a tight lipped smile. 

 

“Keep going, Black.” She cleared, not so subtly letting a chuckle escape. 

 

“Ok…” He had to find his place on the chart again. God damn it was he actually blushing? “Vital signs are recorded as weakened with a downward progression. Regular physical exams have been performed to monitor vitals. Plan of action is to begin use of a Ventricular Assist Device if downward progression of vitals persists, and continue to wait for a donor so the diseased heart can be repla-”

 

“Voldemort.” Remus croaked from his place beneath the mountain of pillows on his bed.

 

Was this kid going to interrupt him every other sentence? Sirius looked up from the chart. “Excuse me?” Voldy-what? He wasn’t even sure if that was a word.

 

“Voldemort.” Remus struggled to sit up a bit, taking a short break for a coughing fit. The man sitting next to his bed jumped in to explain, looking exasperated.

 

“It’s what he’s named his heart.” Lily and Sirius looked confused so Remus, coughing fit subsided, began to explain more. 

 

“It’s not a heart, really.  Not at this point. It’s just a useless lump of muscle tissue that’s trying to kill me. His name is Voldemort.” He smiled at Sirius. “And it’s your job to kill him.”

 

“And try we will, Mr. Lupin.” Mcgonagall took the chart back from a still bewildered Sirius and looked it over. “How’s the pain today.”

 

He was eyeing Sirius again. Sirius crossed his arms uncomfortably. “Getting better as we speak.”

 

Mcgonagall chuckled as she looked over the monitor recording his vitals, jotting down some more notes on the clipboard. 

 

“So,” Remus turned his attention to Lily, pointing the remote at her as he sized her up. “You look like an Addison, for sure.” He gestured to Sirius still standing awkwardly beside her. “Is he more McDreamy or McSteamy?”

 

“What?” Sirius asked. What was it about this kid that caught him so off guard? But Lily seemed to understand. 

 

“He strikes me as more of a Karev. And Addison? I like to think of myself as more of a Christina.”

 

“Oh please, we all want to be Christina. You’ll have to prove yourself on that one, Red.” Remus cracked a smile, flipping the TV remote in his hand

 

“Fair enough,” Lily laughed.

 

“Will someone please tell me what’s going on?”

 

“You don’t watch Grey’s Anatomy?” Remus cocked his head to the side.

 

“Uh,” Sirius scoffed. “I’m an actual doctor. So no.”

 

Remus turned back to Lily. “Definitely a Karev.” They shared a knowing smile.

 

Sirius dropped his shoulders in defeat. What the hell is a Karev?

 

Mcgonagall had finished reading what she needed off the machine. “I’ll need you to stop harassing my interns now, Mr. Lupin.”

 

“You’re no fun Minnie.”

 

“There’ll be plenty of time for that later. They’ll be monitoring you for the next few weeks while we wait to hear about a donor.” She looked over at Lily and Sirius, “Don’t take any of his crap. I need vitals at regular intervals, and a regular eating schedule. I hope you like jello cups.”

 

“Almost as much as I like you, Minnie.” He smiled weakly from his bed. He talked big, but Sirius could tell that this small interaction was already taking a toll on him. Mcgonagall told Remus’s friend, who’s name was James, a few more things to look out for, and then left the room, Sirius and Lily trailing after her. 

 

“You both handled yourselves very well in there.” She spoke softly. Sirius was just starting to notice how exhausted she looked. “I know he can be a handful.” She removed the scrub cap she was still wearing from her earlier surgery, and slipped the hair band out of her hair. “I want you monitoring him till morning, so…” She looked at her watch. “About eight hours.” She ruffled her hair and pulled earrings out of her coat pocket, putting them in her ears quickly, and smiling weakly at them. “Stay by the phone in case UNOS calls.”

 

With that, she turned on her heel, and started walking down the hall.

 

Sirius and Lily looked at each other. “Where are you going?”

 

“Back to my life,” She called back, not bothering to look over her shoulder. She met up with Dr. Sprout at the elevator, who smiled and linked her arm through Mcgonagall’s before they stepped on. 

 

“Eight hours of staring at a phone?” 

 

Lily slumped into a chair behind the cardio floor desk. “At least it’s relaxing?”

 

They looked up as they heard a patter of feet approaching them from down the hall. Soon Mary, Marlene and Peter were skidding to a stop in front of the nurses desk, looking out of breath and excited.

 

“Mystery case from Mcgonagall? Tell us everything.” Mary said in between heaving breaths. 

 

“Is it exploding head syndrome? Ooh ooh Necrotizing Fasciitis? Oh, please tell me its Alien hand syndrome!” Marlene rattled off her personal list of favorite medical maladies. 

 

“Please, Marlene,” Peter said. “We’re in the cardiac wing. It’s Brugada syndrome isn’t it?” The three of them were hanging over the counter, Peter and Marlene grinning wildly, Mary biting her lip with the anticipation. 

 

Sirius rolled his eyes. “Sorry to disappoint, but it’s just hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. We’re just waiting for UNOS to call and monitoring vitals.” The three other interns deflated.

 

“That’s it?” Mary asked.

 

“Oh but he left out the best part.” Lily giggled as she sat up in her chair. “Our patient is totally into him.” 

 

“WHAT?”

 

“He is not.” Sirius was blushing again.

 

“He is too. He called you McDreamy.” Lily laughed.

 

“Ha!” Marlene almost doubled over. “No way. He’s one hundred percent Karev.”

 

“Does everybody watch Grey’s Anatomy but me?” Sirius asked, raising his eyebrow in disgust.

 

“Yes.” Marlene, Mary, and Lily said in unison.

 

“I don’t.” Peter said. 

 

“Of course you don’t, O’Malley.”

 

“Oh my god, he is George isn’t he.”

 

“Shit, which one of us is Izzy?”

 

“You, Marlene.”

 

“I am NOT Izzy. If I’m anyone, I’m Christina.”

 

“Bitch we ALL want to be Christina.”

 

The girls tried to solve the dilemma of who was who at St. Mungos until Marlene’s pager went off. “Shit, Slughorn wants me.” Before they could say goodbye, she was off down the hall. Soon after Peter and Mary were summoned away as well.

 

“Just you and me, kid.” Sirius glanced over at Lily, letting his head loll back over the edge of his chair. 

 

“Kid?”

 

“Graduated top of her class, two years earlier than normal. I read the intern fact sheet. So yeah, kid.” 

 

Lily rolled her eyes. “I was hoping that would go unnoticed.”

 

“Oh, because you don’t want us to feel threatened that we’re working with an actual genius?” Sirius asked, incredulous at her annoyance.

 

“Because it doesn’t define me.” She said, sitting back and crossing her arms.

 

“So what does define you, Evans?” If they had to spend the next eight hours together, they might as well get to know each other. 

 

“I’m a normal person. I have hobbies and shit. I’m a black belt in karate, but no one seems to care about that.”

 

“Yeah you’re not making yourself look anymore like a normal person. You’re just letting me know that you could kick my ass both intellectually and physically.” Sirius laughed, now trying to imagine the redhead in front of him flipping him over her shoulder. 

 

“Yeah ok, maybe I’m not normal. But it’s not like any of the rest of you are either. We spent the best years of our lives cutting open dead people and memorizing muscle nomenclature.”

 

“Best years of our lives? I’m not peaking at 26. My best years are yet to come. Besides medical school was hell.” Sirius sighed, leaning back and rubbing his eyes with his hand.

 

“Not a fan of studying?” Lily asked.

 

“Not a fan of sleeping in my car so I could afford to go to class.”

 

“Oh shit.”

 

“Eh, bygones.”

 

They spent the next couple of hours just swapping stories. Sirius told her about all the odd jobs he held to put himself through college ( I swear to god, Evans, professional line standing is a thing) and Lily told him stories about her supposedly hilarious friend Basil in college.

 

“He  _ killed _ at parties. The things he’d do would make you laugh yourself to death, I swear.” It took about six more death puns before Sirius realised she was talking about her cadaver.

 

Around two in the morning, they had amassed an impressive stockpile of vending machine snacks, using the breaks in between vital monitoring to play poker with cheetos. Occasionally the other interns would stop by to check in, and update on the various happenings of the pit.

 

“I see your three hot cheetos, and I raise you one cool ranch dorito.” Sirius slid the chip smoothly across the table.

 

“He’s bluffing.” Marlene walked passed.

 

“Stop doing that!” Sirius called, angrily flipping her off as Lily grinned and took her winnings. “That’s the third dorito she’s cost me.”

 

“Stop bluffing then.” Lily said as she crunched down on the chip. She glanced at her watch. 2:53. Shit, they should have checked vitals 23 minutes ago. “We better-”

 

“My turn.” Sirius said as he got up from his chair, brushed chip crumbs off his coat, and walked over to Room 239. 

 

He quietly shut the door, and silently grabbed the chart as he tip toed over to the bed. James had left for his own bed around 12:30, so it was just Remus asleep and partially hidden under the pillows.

 

Heart rate 85 bpm, Sirius jotted down as his eyes scanned the machine. Definitely not good, but not worse than last time. Let’s take a look at blood pressure…

 

“Tell me doc, am I dying?” A voice croaked from under the pillows, almost making Sirius jump out of his mismatched shoes. 

 

“Jesus christ, you almost made me have a heart attack.” Sirius mumbled.

 

“Wow, insensitive.” Remus chuckled.

 

“Oh shit, I’m sorry…” Sirius blushed, furious with himself for not thinking before he spoke.

 

“Haha it’s fine. Are you always this serious?”

 

Now it was Sirius’s turn to hold back a laugh. “Well, its my name, you see.” Remus looked over from his bed, confused, so Sirius held up his ID card.

 

“Dr. Sirius Black. Well I’ll be damned. I bet that joke gets old.”

 

“You’d be surprised.” Sirius stood there for a second, not really sure what to do next. “Well...I got what I needed. You should probably get some more sleep.”

 

“Oh yeah. Big day of watching TV tomorrow. Wouldn’t want to wake up unrested.” Remus coughed weakly from his bed. What he lacked in strength he made up for in sass. 

 

“Goodnight.” Sirius smiled as he slipped out of the room and back into the hall. Walking back over to Lily, he slumped into his chair, covering his eyes with his hand. “I honestly don’t know if I can do this every day.”

 

“What, the flirting?” Lily laughed. “Please, he’s just bored. Let him have his fun.”

 

“It’s not that,” Sirius sighed. “It’s that I can’t flirt back.” He lifted his hand, looking at Lily with a confused expression on his face. “And I think I want to.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while

Remus woke the next morning- wait was it morning? It was still dark outside- with his head pounding and his breath ragged. He grabbed his watch off the chair next to his hospital bed and read the time. 

 

**IS:h** blinked out at him from the digital watch face. Wait what? He rubbed his eyes and blinked. Oh. He flipped the watch upside down.

 

**4:51** . Damn. James wouldn’t be here for at least another hour.

 

Waking up in the middle of the night was something Remus hated, but not necessarily something unusual for a person in his condition. One of his symptoms was chronic shortness of breath. When he slept, sometimes his breathing would slow so much and become so shallow that his own body would wake him up just to make sure he was still alive.

 

Unfortunately, that same shortness of breath made sure it was almost impossible for him to fall back asleep once he woke up. He constantly felt like he had just crossed the finish line of a marathon he was in no way prepared for. Gasping and gasping for breath that was never going to return to his lungs. 

 

So there he was. At  **IS:h** in the morning. Awake. Lonely. Bored. Ha! Title of his sex tape. 

 

He propped himself up on a few more pillows, sitting up helping him breath a little easier. Through the window he could see the two new interns asleep at the nurses station, their eyes rolled back and mouths open as the nurses on the floor quietly bustled around them. He snorted. There was a dorito stuck to the side of Sirius’s face.

 

Sirius. Could he call him by his first name, or should he strictly stick with Dr. Black? Remus didn’t know. But he did know that Sirius- sorry, Dr. Black- was way cuter than he should be allowed to be, and since flirting was his only viable form of entertainment he was going to milk it for all it was worth.

 

But you can’t flirt with someone who is sleeping and not in the room. Remus sighed and grabbed the TV remote, resigning himself to ‘Friends’ reruns until James decided to show up, about an hour and a half later.

 

Remus was only mildly invested in the gangs failure to uphold their New Year’s resolutions when he spotted James walking down the hall through the window. James spotted him too and waved, but then stopped when he saw Black and Evans asleep at the nurses station. He looked back at Remus and held up a finger, before running off down the hallway the way he had come.

 

He returned two minutes later with two coffees in his hand which he gently set in front of them, before slapping the table and shouting “Look alive!”

 

Black jumped so hard he fell out of his chair, and Lily accidently knocked herself in the jaw with the clipboard she had been holding in her sleep. James pushed the coffees forward before winking at Evans, and walking in to Remus’s room. 

 

“A wink? Really?”

 

“I was just playing around.” James dropped his bag on the floor and strode over to Remus, pushing his hair back and giving him a kiss on the forehead. “And how are you feeling today, darling?”

 

“Ugh get off me, you prat.”

 

“You think I want to kiss your sweaty forehead?” James plopped into a chair in the corner, sipping something out of a thermos. “Just trying to show my son a little motherly love.”

 

Remus grumbled and sunk lower into his pillow fortress. “What were the coffees for?”

 

“Well you see caffeine is a stimulant of the central nervous system, commonly used to keep people awake. It can also be found in soda, chocolate, even yogurt surprisingly-”

 

“Jackass. You know that’s not what I meant.”

 

“It was to wake them up, dumbass. I’ve seen McGonagall throw people off your case for sleeping while they’re supposed to be monitoring you. I’d like to keep these two around.” James was staring past Remus and out the window to where they were sitting, Lily laughing at the dorito on Sirius’s face.

 

“Wow what a gentleman.” Remus rolled his eyes. He held out a hand for the thermos. “Can I have some coffee, I’m exhausted.”

 

But James just held his thermos closer to his chest. “One: you know you’re not supposed to have caffeine, I don’t know why you even asked.” He took another sip. “Two: this isn’t coffee it’s cereal.” He held out the thermos so Remus could see. It was full almost to the brim with milk, tiny lucky charms marshmallows floating along the top.

 

Remus looked disgusted. 

 

“What?” James said. “It saves time. Everyone should drink their cereal.” James pulled a stack of papers out of his bag. He currently worked as an environmental lawyer for a small firm downtown. This week his team was working on case trying to sue a company for knowingly aiding in the deterioration of a nearby towns water quality. They had compelling evidence, helpful confessions, and a clear paper trail, so of course they would probably lose the case. Yay for the legal system.

 

Normally, if you sat casework in front of James he would instantly be completely focused, the rest of the world gone as he spilled his bleeding heart all over the pages, desperately formulating cases and arguments to help his defendants. But today, something else seemed to be catching his attention.

 

As Remus mindlessly flipped through channel after channel on the TV, he could hear James’s pen scratch frantically against the paper, and then stop. Scratch. And then stop. Scratch...stop. It was driving him insane. 

 

He looked over at James, ready to pull his own hair out, and noticed that the pauses in James’s work seemed to correlate with the new intern, Lily Evans, walking by his window. He would write and write and write, but then a flash of red hair would appear and he would stop, his eyes following her down the entire length of the hallway. Then he would bury his head back in the papers until she came walking back the other way, and then concentration was lost once more. 

 

Two more times and finally Remus couldn’t take it anymore. “Oh my god mate, what gives?”

 

“What?” James looked over his shoulder, clearly not paying attention.

 

“If you stare at her any harder, you’re going to burn a hole in her lab coat.” He chuckled. It was rare for James to gain interest in somebody so quickly. 

 

“I’m not staring. I just got distracted.”

 

“Hmm.” Remus rubbed his chin. “By her face or her ass?”

 

“By her-” James looked at Remus horrified, after he caught himself. “Remus Lupin, I will not stand for the objectifying of women in this household. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

 

“Sorry mom.” He grinned.

 

“Wipe that look of your face. You act like I’m the only one who’s got the hots for one of the interns.”

 

“Excuse me?” Remus feigned surprise, as if playing dumb was going to save him from this conversation.

 

“Please I see you drooling over Black. Ironic thing is, as your doctor he’s the one in charge of wiping it up.”

 

“I can wipe my own drool.”

 

“Congratulations?.” A very confused looking Sirius Black was standing in the doorway of his room. Remus’s face went bright red as he tried to disappear under his mound of pillows. “I just need to check your vitals and then you can get back to doing… whatever.” He wrote some stuff  down on his clipboard and quickly backed out of the room, shooting a quick ‘thanks for the coffee’ in James’s direction. 

 

As soon as the door shut James howled with laughter. 

 

“Shut up!” Remus complained from beneath the pillows.

 

James picked up the pillow covering Remus’s blushing face. “You ok?”

 

“No.”

 

“Wow you’re actually into him.”

 

“I am not. I flirt with all the interns.” And this was true. Bed rest meant Remus couldn’t exercise his body, but it didn’t mean he couldn’t exercise his wit.

 

“True.” James smiled at him. “But this feels different.”

 

Remus’s blush deepened. “What? How?”

 

“You’re trying too hard.”

 

Soon, the urgency of his work forced James to close the blinds to Remus’s room so he could focus. In good company, but still dreadfully bored, Remus turned once again to the TV. He had already finished the books James had brought him for that week, the tattered copies of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and ‘Flowers for Algernon’ stacked on top of each other on a spare chair. There was also a deck of cards on the chair, but if he had to play solitaire one more time he’d scream.

 

So more ‘Friends’ reruns it was. Remus supposed he  _ could _ watch something else, but the only other viable option was ‘Criminal Minds’, and lately the gore had just been aggravating his nausea. Therefore he tried to avoid it, no matter how beautiful he thought Derek Morgan was. 

 

The only problem was that he had seen this episode so many times he could recite it. Probably act it out scene for scene too.

 

“James, I’m bored.”

 

“Hi bored, I’m dad.”

 

“I’m serious.”

 

“No I am.” Black was back in the doorway again. Did he always have to pop up at such inconvenient times? But Sirius flashed a smile and suddenly Remus wasn’t embarrassed any more. “Hate to sound like a broken record, but I need those vitals again.”

 

“Where’s Dr. Evans?” James piped up from the corner. Remus mouthed ‘subtle’ in his direction.

 

“She is observing a neurosurgery.” Sirius replied, biting back the tinge of jealous that threatened to burn the edges of his words. 

 

“What are you, second string?” Remus asked as the other boys eyes scanned over the monitor he was hooked up to. 

 

“That’s a high horse for somebody who can’t wipe their own drool.” Sirius shot cooly back, making Remus’s face burn. James snorted from behind his paperwork. 

 

“Actually I said I can-” Remus stopped, realizing he was only embarrassing himself more. He sunk lower in defeat. Jesus, he had met his match hadn’t he.

 

“Well, you’re not improving, but you’re also not getting worse so I’m going to call this a win. How are you feeling?”

 

“Like a million bucks. Do I not look it?” Remus tried to redeem himself, not willing to admit that this guy had him flustered.

 

Sirius, when met with that comment, sort of...stiffened? He look like he was biting the inside of his cheek to stop himself from saying something. A few more seconds and he replied.

 

“Well, if you’re feeling alright, I should get back out there.” And Sirius, face slightly reddened, left the room.  As he shut the door behind him he mentally cursed himself for making such a fool of himself. 

 

He knew it was ok to keep up a banter between patients. In fact, a lot of his professors had stressed the importance of that as a way to foster relationships with patients who were scared or were hesitant to trust their life in someone else’s hands. The only thing was, it had to be simply that. Just banter. 

 

So he had bit back his response to that last question, the ‘of course you do’ still lodged in his throat. Not because banter was unprofessional. But because he meant it. And when you mean it, it isn’t banter anymore. 

 

Sirius slammed the clipboard down on the countertop of the nurses station, making one of them jump. “Sorry,” He mumbled. God his first shift hadn’t even ended yet and he was fighting back a  _ crush _ on one of his patients? What was wrong with him?

 

Someone cleared their throat behind him, making Sirius jump almost a foot in the air. McGonagall, in different scrubs than yesterday and a clean lab coat, crossed her arms and cocked her head to the side. 

 

“Anything to report?”

 

Sirius coughed and looked down at his notes on the clipboard, before spinning it around to let her look. “He’s not improving but he’s not getting worse either.”

 

She sighed, letting the corners of her mouth fall. “That’s probably all we can ask for. Alright you’re off the hook. I believe your first shift is over in-” She checked her watch. “45 minutes.”

 

Sirius nodded and began to walk down the hall to the break room. A second comment stopped him.

 

“Black? You did well. See you in 24 hours.”

 

Sirius met the other interns in the break room and walked out into the parking lot with them, listening to them recount the multitude of things they had gotten to do in the past forty eight hours. 

 

He got into his car wondering if he should ask to be taken off Lupin’s case. No, he decided as he started the car. It was just a silly crush.

 

It would go away.

 

Wouldn’t it?


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and sorry i only post in the middle of the night, my writing brain only works after 11 pm

The thing about crushes is that they can really only go one of two ways. Option one: you notice an attractive person. Your heart flutters. They smile at you. Your heart flutters faster. They turn around. You move on.

 

Option two: You notice an attractive person. They smile at you. Your heart flutters. You think about the smile that night at dinner. You think about it when you wake up. You see them again and they talk to you this time. Those words become the only thing running through your brain at any given moment. When you’re brushing your teeth. When you’re driving to work. When you’re talking to your friends. When you’re assisting on a highly coveted brain surgery. 

 

“Galea hook please, Dr. Black.” Slughorn’s outstretched hand punctured Sirius’s day dream. He shook Remus’s face to the back of his mind as he handed the neurosurgeon the instrument. Slughorn raised an eyebrow. “Sorry, is this not holding your attention?”

 

“No sir.” God damn it. “I mean yes sir. It is. It won’t happen again.”

 

Slughorn scoffed behind his surgical mask. “What am I going to use this instrument for?” He asked, half teaching, half assessing his student’s promised attention span. 

 

“Galea hook. Used to pull back the epicranial aponeurosis to give access to the cranial bones.” Sirius recited straight from the textbook he had read the night before to prepare for this surgery. It was enough to please Slughorn, who turned and used the hook to perform the task Sirius had just described. 

 

Sirius kicked himself internally. He had worked his ass off over the past month to get this surgery, and he could feel Mary Macdonald hating him from the gallery as she watched him zone out in a surgery she would have killed a man to assist on. You know, if that was legal. 

 

And he  _ had  _ worked hard to get here. It had been a month of getting Slughorn’s coffee. Volunteering to do paperwork. Memorizing surgical procedures backwards and forwards just so he could be prepared for surgeries he might not even be invited into. Practicing sutures on bananas he was supposed to be eating for breakfast. 

 

But it had also been a month of getting excited to see Lupin every day, even if it was just a minute of “Hi, sorry, I need your vitals again.” A month of laughing at Lupins jokes. Of wondering if Lupin ever stared at his ass as he walked out of the room.

 

Slughorn issued another command and Sirius followed promptly this time, pulling the reins in on his distracted brain. 

 

This crush was supposed to go away, god damn it. It had been a month. 

 

But some feelings are just too hard to deny, even if you don’t really know why you have them. So when Mcgonagall asked Sirius if he was up for another night of monitoring vitals, he said yes before the question had even fully left her lips. 

 

“Ok.” She leaned back a little, clearly not expecting this much excitement for one of the most boring tasks for a pre-surgical intern. “Wanting a break after that brain surgery? You must be dead on your feet.”

 

“Oh...yeah. That’s it.” Sirius laughed hesitantly. “Just need a reason to sit down.”

 

“I’ll have Evans relieve you in a few hours. She can take over once her spinal surgery observation after lunch is done.”

 

Sirius tried not to look upset. “Thank you.”

 

He had to admit, he was exhausted. It’s hard to balance the stress of a surgical internship with the stress of repressing very strong very  _ unprofessional  _ feelings. Especially when the unknowing recipient of those feelings went out of his way to flirt like he was going to die tomorrow. 

 

Oh.

 

Bad metaphor.

 

Sirius sighed and put his head in his hands, willing the crush to dissolve. He grabbed the clipboard hanging off the edge of the nurses station and straightened his coat. 

 

“Hey, guess who’s got vital duty again?” Sirius walked in to the room.

 

“Oh don’t tell me. Is it you? For some reason I feel like it’s you.” Remus replied without looking up from the newspaper in his hands. James was packing stuff into his bag. 

 

Sirius walked over to the monitor as James said his goodbyes, waved and then left. 

 

“I think Evans is in the cafeteria.” Sirius called over his shoulder, looking back at James. “If you wanted to...you know… grab a snack.”

 

If he had to get flustered over a crush he didn’t want, Sirius could at least take other people down with him. 

 

He turned back to the monitor, as James walked away slightly redder than before. A pen scratched quietly beside him.

 

“Did you finish yet?” He asked, looking over at the pale-due-to-poor-circulation hands of Remus Lupin. The other boy had frequently mentioned the boredom that accompanied an almost year long stay in a hospital bed, so Sirius did what any empathetic doctor would do.

 

He stole his neighbors newspaper every morning so Remus could work on the crossword.

 

“I finished it an hour ago. Now I’m using it as a word search. You won’t believe how many words I’ve found.” Remus looked up at him, the boredom obviously still eating away at his sanity.

 

“Ah, so we have jokes today, huh?” Sirius asked amidst writing down the various readings from the monitor.

 

“Yep. You know I did stand up before my heart crapped out.”

 

“Really?” Sirius perked up, surprised.

 

“No.” Remus looked up with that stupid, sarcastic grin. 

 

Sirius rolled his eyes. “Well, my job is done. I’ll be back in a few hours.” He turned, one hand on the door handle.

 

“Wait.”

 

Sirius paused, unsure.

 

“Could you stay?”

 

“What?”

 

Suddenly Remus wasn’t so confident any more. “Nevermind. You’re probably busy. It’s just that James had court today, and it’s kind of an anniversary of sorts, and I didn’t want to be...I shouldn’t have asked.”

 

The entire time that Sirius had spent with Remus, he had never stopped to consider that Remus wanted him to be there. But he shook those thoughts away. This didn’t sound like it had anything to do with him. 

 

“What? No, I can stay.” He sat down awkwardly in a chair by Remus’s bed. They sat like that for a few minutes, Sirius looking at anything but Remus, and Remus trying to will the redness out of his cheeks. 

 

Remus was about to apologize again, tell him he could go, but Sirius spoke.

 

“Anniversary of what?” He almost didn’t want to hear. Was this the moment when the guy he had been crushing on for a month told him he had a girlfriend? Oh god, the flirting was all in his head, wasn’t it? He shouldn’t be here.

 

“Oh.” Remus hesitated. “I got put on the donor list a year ago today.” He looked down at his hands, nervously picking at his fingernails. “Kind of thought I’d be off it by now.”

 

Sirius sat there, hands folded tightly in his lap. He didn’t know what to say. There were about a hundred statistics he could list off about organ donation right now, none of them comforting. His education told him that, realistically, Remus would probably be on the donor list for a couple more years before they heard anything. But Remus looked over at him, his breath caught, his eyes watery, and Sirius wished he could tell him they’d hear something tomorrow, even though he knew they wouldn’t.

 

“I’m going to die in this room, aren’t I?”

 

Again, Sirius was left speechless. A cardinal rule of bedside manner is to not make promises you can’t keep. You have to substitute “It will all be ok” with “We’re doing our best.” Because even when you do your best, sometimes it’s still not ok. But he couldn’t say nothing, so he mumbled, “I’m sorry.”

 

Remus laughed weakly, and wiped the corner of his eye, getting rid of the tears before they could escape. “Wow, great pep talk.”

 

“I’m sorry I don’t know what to say, I-”

 

“No, don’t apologize. I shouldn’t have put that on you.” He wouldn’t look at Sirius, just sat there twirling his pen between his fingers. “It’s just fucking terrifying. Not knowing what comes next.”

 

“I know.”

 

Remus looked at Sirius, one eyebrow raised. “Oh do you also have a heart that thinks it’s only job is to take up space?”

 

Sirius stuttered. “I mean, obviously I have no idea what you’re going through. And I know my situation in no way compares to yours. But I do know, at least a little bit, of what it feels like to go to sleep at night wondering if you’ll make it through tomorrow.”

 

The pen stopped twirling. Remus looked over, his interest piqued. Misery loves company right? And Sirius, feeling like he should elaborate, shakily began telling a story known by only a select few.

 

“Uh- I made what some would categorize as bad decisions when I was younger, and got kicked out of my house the summer before I was supposed to leave for college.” Now Sirius was the one that couldn’t look the other boy in the eyes. “I still wanted to go to school, but since I worked in a grocery store, I couldn’t afford it anymore. Well, I could afford classes, but not room and board, and even then it was a close call. I couldn’t afford a meal plan, or a place to live, and since the library janitors kept kicking me out, I slept in an alley behind one of the frat houses most nights.” He scratched the back of his head, not knowing if Lupin’s silence was good or bad. 

 

“Ate almost nothing, unless an event was having free food.” He could feel knots forming in the pit of his stomach as he let his story uncomfortably unfold. Sirius laughed nervously. “Anyways, details aren’t important. I’m just saying that there were alot of nights where I wasn’t really sure if I was going to make it to tomorrow. Or if it was even worth it, you know, to make it to tomorrow.”

 

His words hung in the air for a second.

 

“But you did.” Remus spoke softly, trying not to scare the unsuspected vulnerability out of the room. “Make it to tomorrow, I mean.”

 

Sirius finally met his eyes. “Yeah, I did. I had kind of a weird coping mechanism I guess.”

 

“Are you going to tell me what it is?” Remus smiled.

 

“Uh, if you want.”

 

“I do.”

 

“Ok. Well, every night I would promise myself that if I woke up the next morning, I would do something that day that I had never done before. Not big things or anything. But something new. So even if I died the next day, I could say at least I got to do that one thing before I died. I think it gave me a bit of control, when I didn’t have any control over the rest of my life.”

 

Remus laughed. Of all the things he had expected, that wasn’t on the list. “What sort of things?”

 

“Ok, well once I went swimming in the reflection pond. I, uh, don’t recommend that, I got leeches.”

 

Remus laughed again, almost bringing himself to the brink of a coughing fit.

 

“I climbed a tree once. I caught a lizard. Played beer pong. Listened to a Taylor Swift song. There’s always something.” Sirius was turning red.

 

Remus snorted. “Which Taylor Swift song?”

 

“You belong with me.”

 

“That’s a little presumptuous.”

 

“And, you’re back with the jokes.” Sirius laughed, trying to ignore the wink Remus threw his way. 

 

Sirius’s laugh faltered away and they just sat there for a moment. Remus was the first one to speak. 

 

“I think it’s a really cool idea. It’s just I’m kind of stuck here. I’m pretty sure I’ve done all there is to do in a hospital bed.”

 

“There’s gotta be something. Are there any Taylor Swift songs you haven’t listened to?”

 

“Believe it or not, no.”

 

“Ok, well that’s a thing I know about you now.”

 

They sat there brainstorming for a while, Remus throwing out ideas like rob a bank, egg a house, hotwire a car. 

 

“I think McGonagall would kill me if I let you leave this hospital, doubly so if I let you leave this hospital to become a felon.”

 

“Well, we could hotwire  _ her _ car and then she couldn’t chase after us.”

 

The ideas kept getting more and more outlandish, until Remus proposed one that Sirius though maybe, just maybe he could work with. 

 

“I’ve never seen a shooting star.”

 

Sirius stopped, running a game plan in his head for a second. Remus wrinkled his forehead. 

 

“What does that look mean?”

 

“It means I’m thinking, hold on.”

 

“Wait, really?” Sirius just held up a finger. But the thinking was interrupted when the pager he kept at his waist chirped three times.  

 

“Shit.” He looked at it. “Ok they need me down at trauma.” He got up, the look in his eyes still wild. “Uh, get some rest. I’ll be back in three hours, tops. I need you awake when I get here, ok?”

 

He clipped his pager back to his belt, threw up a thumbs up, and sprinted down the hallway.


	5. Chapter 5

Three hours turned into to four, and then six, and then seven and a half, but Remus supposed Sirius’s job was slightly more important than his own entertainment. But soon enough Sirius’s head popped through the doorway, a huge smile on his face.

 

“Hey! You ready?” He whispered as he walked into the room. In one swift motion he unhooked the railing on the side of the bed and pushed it down.

 

“Yeah.” Remus said. “Why are we whispering?”

 

Sirius held out his hand. “Because it’s dramatic.” Really, it was because he was pretty sure he was about to break several rules doing what they were about to do.

 

Remus grabbed Sirius’s hand, ignoring the sudden uprising of butterflies in his stomach, and shakily stood up. “Alright.” He said, trying to steady his weak knees, and already embarrassingly out of breath. “Let’s do this.”

 

Sirius led him to the door where they were  met by the prying eyes of the nurses at the nurses station. “Just taking Mr. Lupin to get some exercise.” Sirius said. When they kept staring he added, “The more exercise he gets, the less bed sores you have to clean.” They quickly resumed their earlier activities. 

 

“Wow, thanks for that.”

 

Sirius smirked at him, leading him down the hall and around the corner. 

 

“So at which point during this grueling journey do I get to know where you’re taking me?” Remus asked, still trying to ignore the fact that he couldn’t breathe. They had just entered a stairwell. The mere thought of having to climb stairs made Remus’s heartbeat faster. “Also, is there an elevator to where we’re going?”

 

Sirius steadied Remus against a wall. “Yes, there’s elevator access. You’re standing right next to the elevator, genius.”

 

Remus turned to look over his shoulder. “Oh. Right.”

 

Sirius pressed the button. “So it’s been dark for a couple hours now, and I know we’re in the city, but the helicopter pad is high enough that I think we’ll have relatively low light pollution. And we don’t have any incoming helicopters tonight, I checked like three times so we should be good.”

 

“Helicopter pad?”

 

“Yeah man. You’re gonna see yourself a shooting star.” Sirius grinned, grabbing Remus’s hand again and leading him gently into the elevator when the door opened. “Ready?”

 

“Oh my god you were actually serious.”

 

“Come on now, you knew that.” Sirius grinned even wider. “It’s on my name tag.” He laughed when Remus weakly punched him in the arm. 

 

The night was cool when they stepped outside onto the roof. Remus took a deep breath, holding it for a bit before he exhaled. “I haven’t been outside in weeks.” He thought aloud, looking wide eyed at the city lights below them. 

 

“Beautiful, right?” Sirius said, his eyes trained on Remus’s face.

 

“Yeah…” Remus whispered, taking a moment just to stare at the twinkling lights below. “So where do we sit?”

 

“Anywhere, I guess.” Sirius said, looking around at the cement helicopter pad. “Oh shit I didn’t bring a blanket or anything.”

 

Remus went to sit down, but Sirius stopped him, hastily pulling off his lab coat. “Here, it’s my fault I forgot the stupid blanket. You can sit on this.”

 

Remus only laughed. “Sirius, I’ve worn these pajamas for three days in a row now, sitting on concrete isn’t going to make them any worse.”

 

“Fine. Just trying to be nice… Remus.” Sirius tried to pretend that it was totally casual thing that they had just called each other by their first names. And he tried to ignore that he absolutely loved the way his name sounded coming out of Remus’s mouth. 

 

They got down on the concrete, laying side by side, but a respectable distance away from one another. 

 

Sirius, the silence just making his face redder, starting listing of constellations he knew. “Do you see that triangle of bright stars over there?” He pointed.

 

“I could literally pick any three stars and they would make a triangle.”

 

“Ok asshole, they’re the bright ones.” Sirius scooted closer so he could point from Remus’s perspective. “There.”

 

Remus’s eyes trailed down Sirius’s arm and up into the sky. He still couldn’t tell what he was pointing at. “Oh ok, now I see them.” He lied, using this as an excuse to breath in the smell of Sirius’s shampoo. 

 

“That’s the head of canis major. The really really bright star in the corner of the constellation is Sirius. The star I was named after.”

 

Remus laughed. “You were named after a star?”

 

“Oh shut up, you were named after a wolf boy.”

 

“Fair point.”

 

Surprisingly, laying on a helicopter pad in the middle of the night looking at the stars with one of his patients wasn’t as awkward as Sirius thought it would be. Conversation came easily between the two of them as Remus began joking around, and Sirius eagerly tried to educate him on his very important knowledge of stars. 

 

“Oh my god look!” Remus pointed frantically, his eyes lit up almost as bright as the city beneath them. “It’s a shooting star!” He turned his head and smiled at Sirius, waiting for his reaction. 

 

Sirius had to stifle his laughter as he watched the blinking white light sail across the sky. “That’s a plane, Remus.”

 

“No it’s…” He looked again. “Oh, it’s blinking.” Sirius was holding his side in pain from trying to hold back his laughter. 

 

“Honest mistake. Could have happened to anyone.”

 

Suddenly, the pager clipped at Sirius’s side let out three high pitched beeps. Still laughing he went to grab it, bringing the screen up to his face to read  _ McGonagall: 911. Where R U? _

 

His blood ran cold. “We need to go back.”

 

“What?”

 

“We need to go back. Oh my god we’ve been out here way too long, McGonagall’s going to kill me.”

 

“Ok, ok geez, let’s go back.” Sirius helped Remus up, trying to still the panic rising in his chest. This was such an overstep. She could suspend him. Or fire him. 

 

“I am so fucking stupid.” The elevator doors opened and they spilled back into the hospital, walking as quickly as Remus could down the hallway.

 

“I can just tell her it was my idea.” Remus said.

 

“Doesn’t matter.” Sirius’s face was white with fear. “I’m in charge.”

 

Finally they rounded the corner to see McGonagall and Evans standing outside the room to Remus’s door. As McGonagall turned, Sirius’s apology was already halfway out of his mouth, but it went unheard.

 

“UNOS called! We have a heart!”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has been 166 days

With the heart arriving in an hour to the recently vacated helicopter pad, Remus got planted firmly back in bed. “Dr. Evans will run your pre op scans, as i believe Dr. Black is due for a break.” McGonagall was busy shuffling clipboards, scheduling her OR, and giving Lily a detailed run down on all of her responsibilities for the next hour. She walked back out into the hall, leaving Lily to her tasks and almost running straight into a very nervous Sirius Black, still waiting on his reprimands. 

 

“What are you doing, Black?” She asked, passing off a few forms to a nurse. “Get some rest, I’ll see you in OR 3 in an hour.”

 

Sirius blinked. She didn’t want to know where he had been?

 

“Oh,” McGonagall spoke over her shoulder as she walked off down the hall. “Next time clear patient exercise with me. I know monitoring vitals is boring but we don’t want to overextend anyone.” Her sneakers padded off, getting fainter as she turned the corner.

 

Sirius breathed a little easier knowing he had gotten away with his stupidity this time. This time?  _ This better not become a habitual offense, you fucking moron, _ He thought to himself as he sheepishly scampered down the hall to an on call room.

 

But the lack of punishment didn’t stop the panic rising in the pit of his stomach. Because what he had done didn’t worry him. The terror came with the fact that he wanted to do it again.

 

“I can’t be in that surgery.” He whispered to himself, as he closed the door of the darkened room behind him. “Feelings for a patient? Are you kidding?” He fell back onto the bed, staring up at the bottom of the bunk above him. 

 

“That’s got to break some kind of conflict of interest rule right? I can’t tell McGonagall that.” He continued muttering to himself as he rubbed his temples. “I’ve been up for almost 24 hours. Can I just play the tired card?” The empty room didn’t answer him. “I can’t back out of this surgery, what kind of intern backs out of a highly coveted first year heart transplant offer? I’ve lost my god damn mind.”

 

Someone cleared their throat.

 

“Listen dipshit, you’re clearly going through something right now, but can you do it in your head so I can sleep?” Sirius froze as the voice of Mary Macdonald floated across the dark room from the top bunk. HIs throat closed shut in panic, the following silence pinning him to the bed, crushing his abdomen, when her head peeked upside down from the railing above him. “Wait. Did you say the heart transplant on the board is up for grabs?” Another pause, and then Marlene hurled herself out of bed, going straight for the door.

 

The weight lifted off Sirius and he sprinted down the hall, almost colliding into her as she stopped in front of McGonagall who was coming out of a conference room. 

 

“Dr. M, I want in on the heart transplant surgery.”

 

McGonagall looked up. “Are you going to fight for your spot, Dr. Black?”

 

A million and one answers flew through Sirius’s mind.  _ I think I’m getting sick, I’m too tired, I don’t feel ready, I haven’t eaten and my hands are shaky.  _ Sirius sighed, sure that he was about to demote himself to the bottom of the intern totem pole. “I want her to have it.”

 

McGonagall’s stare hardened. “You want Dr. Macdonald to have your spot on a heart transplant surgery? A spot I gave to you on a case you’ve been working for weeks?” Clearly that hadn’t been the answer she wanted.

 

“Yes.” Sirius said, trying not to let his voice waver. “I’ve been in surgery and the pit all day and I think at this level of exhaustion I’d be a liability in the operating room.”  _ Also I’m falling in love with the patient and I might hyperventilate if you make me cut him open. _

 

“That’s very responsible of you Dr. Black, but you’ll have to get used to being on your feet for longer than you were today. You know the case better and you’d be the better person for the job.” She straightened up, looking at Macdonald with the last statement, letting her know that she better perform at 110 percent of her ability. “Macdonald the spot is yours. Black, you can watch from the balcony. I’d like to see some follow through from you in the future” She started down the hall, her white coat swishing behind her as she sent one last command over her shoulder. “And for the love of god Black, get some rest.”

 

Ignoring Macdonald’s gloating, Sirius slunk back to the on call room. 

 

Follow through. As he sank back on the bed, Sirius’s mind reeled as he thought back to what he had done tonight. No, what he had  _ started.  _ Was he allowed to follow through on that too?

 

***

“Voldemort dies tonight!” James, having rushed back to the hospital as soon as he heard was making a toast. Since Remus couldn’t eat or drink anything before the surgery, he was doublefisting champagne in two styrofoam cups, drinking the toast for both of them. He poured himself another two cups and offered one up to Dr. Evans, who was still checking Remus’s stats on the monitor.

 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, considering I’m currently prepping for open heart surgery on your friend.” She politely pushed the cup down, ignoring James as he threw them both back like shots. 

 

James  babbled on and on endlessly, but the noise faded out until all Remus could hear was the weak-as-fuck pumping of his piece-of-shit heart in his ears. And he didn’t even care, because he was  _ getting a new one _ . 

 

He tried to slow his breathing. If he kept spiraling like this his heart would burst before he made it to the operating room. A new heart. The thing he’d been waiting for, dreaming about, ceaselessly thinking about for the last three years. If this went well, he could be out of this godforsaken bed in two weeks. He could sleep in his own bed again, hang out with his friends, choose his own meals. He could leave. 

 

And if this didn’t go well he could die. 

 

Either way, he’d probably never have to look at the inside of this hospital room again. And either way, he’d never see Sirius again either. 

 

It was almost poetic in a way. Having to get his heart stolen to make room for the new one. Because that’s what had happened up on that helicopter pad. The walk from the bed to the elevator has stolen his breath, but the man next to him with the soft hair and weirdly vast knowledge of stars had stolen his heart. 

 

“Remus?” Remus’s eyes focused back onto reality, and onto James’s face which was sporting a look that told him he had been talking to him for a while.

 

“Sorry what?”

 

“Are you ok? You’re getting a new heart man!! Show me some enthusiasm!” James’s voice was too loud, these lights were too bright, the sheets felt too rough. Remus took a very shaky breath, James’s expression quickly turning confused as he say tears spring to Remus’s eyes. “Hey, hey what’s wrong?”

 

Remus balled his hands into fists against his thighs, steadying his breath before he spoke. “I could die,” was all he managed to get out, barely above a whisper. And he was scared of that, terrified, but his life isn’t really what he was worried would end tonight.

 

James, and Dr. Evans who had overheard, rushed in to comfort him, James with his bubbly optimistic personality, Dr. Evans with her neatly prepared, evenly said list of heart transplant success statistics. But Remus wasn’t listening anymore, he was remembering.

 

How Sirius snuck him an extra jello cup every night he was on call, orange because “that’s the only valid flavor, really.” 

 

The way he would ask him about the book he was reading, and bring him crossword puzzles to do, and newspaper comics he thought were funny.

 

How he seemed to remember every detail Remus told him about his life, slipping him magazines with the pages folded down on articles he thought Remus would like. 

 

And just hours ago, whatever it was that they had just done. Sirius was the only doctor Remus had ever been treated by who seemed intent on making sure Remus  _ lived,  _ not just that Remus stayed alive. 

 

Remus raised a shaky hand to interrupt both Dr. Evans and James. “How much time do I have before surgery?”

 

Lily checked her watch. “About forty five minutes, then the nurses will come take you to the operating room.”

 

“Ok. I think I’m going to just sleep until then.”

 

“I think that’s a good idea.” Dr. Evans wrote one final thing down on her clipboard, before offering to show James to the visitor’s waiting room. He gave Remus a supportive pat on the arm as he left.

 

Remus settled back into the pillows, closing his eyes, bracing himself for the longest forty five minutes of his life. 

 

***

Sirius sat up as his alarm went off right next to his ear. He rubbed the brief sleep out of his eyes and grabbed his white coat off the hook on the back of the door. Remus would be in surgery by now. 

 

He flung the door open, putting his coat on as he walked hurriedly to the board to check the schedule. 

 

LUPIN/HT/OR 3

 

He left for OR 3 as fast as he had come, leaving a couple of unfazed nurses in his wake. 

 

Sirius entered the viewing balcony quietly, settling in between two residents he didn’t recognize. Below him he could see Remus’s body spread out on the table and covered in sterile sheets, his face obscured by the anaesthetic equipment. Sirius watched as an OR nurse spread antiseptic solution over his chest. 

 

“Ten blade,” McGonagall’s open gloved hand was outstretched expectantly. Sirius leaned back in his seat, his temperature rising. This was it.

 

McGonagall made an incision from Remus’s Adam’s apple to the center of his chest. Sirius bit his lip as her and Mary MacDonald worked together to crack his sternum. Lily stood nearby with the donor heart, packed on ice. 

 

The surgery progressed slowly, as all surgeries do, bypass, to heart removal, to donor heart preparation, Sirius sitting anxiously through the whole thing.

 

He paced the balcony a little bit, got doritos from the vending machine in the hall. He licked dorito dust off his fingers to the disgust of the guy he was sitting next to, he muttered the steps they took as they happened, steps he had rehearsed week after week in preparation. But progress was slow. And he was tired. And sitting in a viewing balcony isn’t near as stimulating as performing open heart surgery. Because about two hours in Sirius fell asleep. 

 

And then he woke up. In an empty view balcony. Above a dark operating room. Containing an empty operating table.  _ Shit. _

 

Sirius started out of his chair in a daze. What time was it? Had the surgery been successful, or… He didn’t want to even think about it. Why didn’t anybody wake him the fuck up. Panicked, he started for the door, but it opened before he even touched the handle.

 

“Black!” Lily’s face smiled at him from the other side of the door. “Where have you been?”

 

“I- wha- uh…” He stuttered. He must have been sleeping with his mouth open because it was bone dry.

 

“We finished like an hour ago.” Evans said. “He been asking for you.”


End file.
